Craig Jones has now spoken publicly to break down the controversial judging for CJI 2, explaining why B-Team Jiu-Jitsu were rightfully declared the winners during the live broadcast. It was an excellent event outside from the controversy at the end, as CJI 2 delivered dozens of great matches between elite competitors. It all culminated in an incredibly close final match between B-Team and New Wave Jiu-Jitsu and when it went to the judges’ scorecards, the atmosphere was tense in the arena. All three judges scored it as a 47-47 draw and according to the rules of the tournament, that meant that the final match was used as the tiebreaker and Nicky Rodriguez brought the title home for B-Team.
There was some clear confusion among the New Wave competitors at the time and their teammate Gordon Ryan even openly accused CJI of being biased against them. Jones addressed that immediately, and raised a very interesting point:
“First and foremost, there was no bias shown in the leadup to the event whatsoever. The wildcards… I had one team complaining about a wildcard, two wildcards, things like that… Guys if I was going to be biased against my former team, DDS / New Wave, I would not have given them Mica Galvao. I gave them Mica Galvao; who, in my opinion, is the number one grappler in the world. If I had any stake in a personal hatred for them and I was invested in them losing this event, I would not have given them Mica Galvao. I want to make that abundantly clear.”
Jones also revealed that there was also complaints of him favoring other teams prior to the event too, and New Wave actually benefitted from the resulting rule change:
“They did complain about ATOS receiving two wildcards, so what did I do? Gave everyone two wildcards. Which team then took a second wildcard, Vagner Rocha?”
One of the other points of contention early on in the event was the brackets themselves, as many people would have picked ATOS and New Wave as the top seeds and they were placed on the same side of the bracket. Jones revealed that not only was the CJI 2 bracketing intentional, but he also compensated for it by giving B-Team a difficult opening round:
“Now to explain the brackets, which some people complained about. Two teams in the entire tournament had two wildcards, ATOS and New Wave. So it was in my opinion the most fair option to put them on the same side of the bracket. What did I do in return for that? Well I asked John Danaher who the fourth seed was. In my opinion it would have been (Australasia) or Daisy Fresh. John gave a summary of each and he thought Daisy Fresh was the fourth seed. Instead of putting Daisy Fresh in the bottom position, I gave B-Team first round who John Danaher thought was perceived fourth seed.”
Finally, Craig Jones addressed the judging at CJI 2 itself, and he explained why the decision ended up in favor of B-Team even though they won fewer matches:
”The 10-point must system rewards dominance and submission attempts. We use that so it’s not just match one, match two, match three, win to that team. We don’t want people to coast to victory. We want to reward people for trying to dominate and finish their opponents, right? Everyone’s confused because they were like ‘wait a minute. If we go to the final; New Wave won three matches, B-Team won two.’ Well guess what? In a UFC title-fight, you can win three rounds and still lose the fight.”
Craig Jones shared his breakdown of the judging at CJI 2 in a recent video uploaded to the official YouTube channel of B-Team Jiu-Jitsu:
